Product Information Management for Automobile Industry

Product Information Management works at the core level of the automotive industry.

With the availability of a large number of products from various channels and harmonising product data to meet the expectations of buyer and supplier, PIM becomes an indispensable part of the section to remove the issue and effectively manage the data.

Before the final product goes into the hands of customers, the product data of the materials as sold by the suppliers goes through various players.

Source: Research Gate

Suppliers provide the materials to the OEMs( like BMW, Audi), Distributors responsible for selling products to wholesalers and the retailers who deal in selling specific items.

The OEMs and the distributors sell their products to dealers and to the repair shops respectively who finally sells the product to the customers.

Based on the above scenario, the product data of the material goes through a various section which makes itimportant to be harmonised so that everyone can speak the same language which will finally contribute and higher sales and efficiency.

The automotive industry also needs to master two important standards of auto parts data :

PIES and ACES Standards

With the continuous technological changes, changing market demands and customer preferences, and to adapt to the business process, companies need to harmonize their master data for vendors, suppliers and distributors.

Today everyone in this automotive industry requires in-depth information about the parts.

Source: AutoCare

Auto standards like PIES and ACES, helps manufacturers and sellers enhance their product data which helps in easy sharing and reducing inefficiencies that can arrive by maintaining data in multiple formats.

PIES or Product Information Exchange Standard (PIES) helps in better management and exchange of product information fields like pricing, delivery information, content, product attributes etc for all members of the supply chain.

Let say, a scenario where we need to manage New Number Association. The process requires gathering data from multiple sources and manually checking each one them which further delays the time to release new products.

If a product arrives early in the market, it proves to be profitable for the supplier but with the process being followed, it usually delays the time frame by 3-5 months

Distribution to Multiple Platforms and Markets

The product information of the automotive parts also needs to be distributed to various distributors, retailers and wholesalers by the suppliers.

Now the automotive supplier does not have to spend time collecting data, manually checking it and storing them all at one place and harmonising each data collected from various sources.

Distribution to Multiple Platforms

Once the data has been harmonised on the PIM platform, next comes the task of distributing that data to various vendors or platforms. The product can be available online or in offline version to the vendors.

PIM platforms make sure that you can easily export your data in whatever you want. For Online Shop, like eCommerce platforms or marketplaces, you can use connectors to connect your PIM platform and export them to respective platform.

For retailers who want data in theprinted format, you can export the data in XLS/CSV format or in the form of magazine, brochures and leaflets.

Boosted ROI

When accurate data is passed on to multiple systems, and from one centralized source, operational costs are reduced for maintaining the data and removing inaccuracies.

When the data information is correctly fed to systems, it reduces the time of product availability in the market for the demand to fulfil which gain high profit to the suppliers.

Data Consistency

If you are a distributor and dealing with products from various suppliers, you can easily connect with them and provide an instance of a PIM solution to them.

You can assign the access level to various sellers from where they can easily upload their products and add additional information if required.

Source: Akeneo

The data gets accumulated to one place and you can send the same data to multiple retailers and wholesalers.

Since the data is being sourced from one place, you can rest assured of data accuracy as it remains consistent at every single place.

The above scenario very much presents the facts as to how much PIM can be proved as beneficial for the automotive industry.

If not for the less resource needed to handle PIM, it’s much worth to handle the data in one place solving the biggest problems of data sourcing and inaccuracies.